i'm getting these butterflies
by coffee-stained lips
Summary: He's grown up, inside and out, like Santana – even if Finn denies that truth some of the time. / Finn&Santana. Oneshot.


**Failure of a first attempt at Santana/Finn. Forgive me.**

It drips off her skin, the rain does, plopping down in heavy gushes and running down her legs like inglorious waterfalls. She hangs her head, staring at the little drops that drip onto her Converse, and then trickle to the cracked gray pavement. She feels she could cry and no one would notice because she's dripping wet already, and the rain stings like salty tears always do. It's no longer just water coming down on her: it's electricity in tiny clear bulbs, dribbling down her skin – liquefied fire coursing through her veins.

And it _burns_.

The cool water literally starts to turn blistering hot as raindrops hit over and over in the same spots on her lightly freckled, tan skin. She raises her head very slightly and sees all these other girls in their short Cheerio skirts with their hair all done up in buns and ponytails (_that used to be her_) barely getting a single shiver from rain hitting them as they slide into their fancy-shmancy cars, and wave goodbye to their friends. Santana – she's too _good_ for friends. She has lovers and acquaintances, but when it comes to sharing feelings and bawling her eyes out, that's what Oprah's for.

Sometime during the next giant barrage of rain, she feels someone standing over her, their shadow tall and skinny as it envelops her body. She sets her eyes in her best death glare, and tilts her head upward at this intruder, but she sees it's just Finn – but she doesn't like the look on his face any better than if some other guy was standing over her.

He just kind of stares dumbly for a second, lips parted just enough she can see a thin black line leading into his mouth, brown eyes speckled with clouds of confusion. He's almost completely dry, having kept himself hidden inside as he waited, but that adjective starts to lose its power as he stands above her, looking down on her on the bench, in the range of fire.

"Do you…" he stutters, eyes flicking to his shoes and her face. "Do you need a – a ride home?" She sees him tense as he asks, and why wouldn't he? Such a simple question is enough to provoke her to say something, _any_thing, nasty or cruel or vicious or just plain _snotty_. She feels deliciously brutal comments bubbling in the back of her throat, but with a sudden urge to swallow them, they start to taste like bile.

"Thanks for the offer." she says, through gritted teeth. "No." She says it with enough roughness that she's still the same Santana, but she could come up with such better things to say than that (_trust us_).

He falters at her answer, stepping backward with that easily attained expression of fear popping onto his face. She keeps her face steady, staring at him, burning holes in him.

"Um…okay." he replies, lowering his head like a sad puppy and turning to walk away. She sees his hair, that always manages to stay standing up, flatten on his head with that wet sheen on it. The rain pelts him even harder, and she feels his electric drops as they smack against his face, so much she feels like holes are being burnt clear through her own flesh.

.

When he shows up on her doorstep with a bouquet of practically dead flowers all withered and graying, she's not surprised.

(Okay, maybe a _little_.)

He simpers at her from beneath the beads of sweat, and he looks like somebody's kicked him in his nuts, to be honest—twice.

She remembers him having that look on nearly a year ago, when he came here for the first time in tattered jeans and a brown T-shirt. Only then it had been _her_ in charge of the night: how it would happen, how long it would be, all her duty to get Finn across this stepping stone that she crossed so long ago (_for her own personal benefit, of course_.)

But now it's Finn, isn't it, with a plan, or lack thereof, with a duty to attend to. It unnerves her, to say the least, to be second in-command, the one without the knowhow, and it ensconces her with a feeling of helplessness that she needs to get rid of, like, _right_ _now_. So she coolly crosses her arms, coolly lifts her one eyebrow, coolly leans against the doorframe—_cool_.

"Uh…" He shoves the flowers at her, and she takes them (coolly, but of course). "Happy anniversary?" She watches as his face falls when she does nothing more than stare at him expressionlessly, and maybe with a hint of irritation.

"Excuse me?" she responds.

"You know, I thought girls _liked_…that kind of stuff…" His left arm is twitching, and he's cringing at every word he spits out because all she's doing is calmly glaring at him through long lashes, and he's not one to take abuse (silent or loud) lightly.

"Maybe girls you're dating." she hisses, with just the right amount of anger, as she chokes the hurt at its source. "Not girls you hooked up when your elfin girlfriend was off with some prancing pretty boy." She recognizes his hurt (_just seen a day ago_), and he's stuttering as he tries to gain the courage to move away. He squeezes his fists, grits his teeth, before taking his colossal feet and stepping backward –

"But fine. Free night, right." She swiftly grabs her coat, puts it on, and takes him, stumbling and bewildered, toward his car.

.

He takes her to a creek, where everything glows pale blue by the moon. She stays to the side as he overlooks the water. His eyes, she notices, are dancing – brown dots, swirling madly. He looks just like a big kid, gawky in his trousers and T-shirt, legs spindly and arms too long, with a hint of boyish mischief in his eyes. Suddenly she herself feels a thousand years older than him.

He looks at her, not any better dressed in sweatpants, a blue blouse with matching headband, and a Northface on. But he doesn't lose any light, just smiles wider, even as she folds her hands and cocks her hip maliciously.

Slowly he slides his fingers through the cracks between hers, and they both glide to the shoreline. There's no sand to shuffle her toes through or pink-and-white seashells to pick up, and the smell is of mildew and not salt. But Finn – god, he _is_ just a boy trapped in a man's (_just an older boy's_) body. Despite the trials of his life, he somehow can shrink back down to five-year-old size, when his dark hair was still light blonde and his fingers were the length of what his thumb is now and it was acceptable to stick your tongue out at girls, and then afterwards they'd think you liked them. But now all that is vice versa; he's grown up, inside and out, like Santana – even if Finn denies that truth some of the time.

With her hand placed securely in his, he and she continue their drift over the grassy, mosquito-infested shore. The breeze blows gnats into her tangle of black hair, and she tries to swat at them with her free hand, but it's a fruitless attempt – it's Ohio, not California, and she should learn to accept that.

But, being Santana Lopez, of course she refuses to.

"Now I see why you can't hold down a girlfriend," she says with her usual sass, and aversion of eye contact, "Your dates _suck_." She can see his neck glowing a radiant red through her peripheral and she allows herself to smirk openly, a sign she sees the blush and finds it quite amusing.

"I think it's nice." he mumbles. "Quiet and…uh, that, you know, that word – "

"Boring? Tasteless? Moronic? Stop me when I get it right."

"Quaint."

Santana rolls her eyes; surely hers are more befitting for the setting. But as he halts and they lean against a tree rooted in the puddles, Santana can see where he pulled that word out. The sound of honking cars and cursing people, flashy lights and the faint smell of pink lemonade and barbecue (_strangely enough they always made her retch_) are all gone, replaced by the light buzz of mosquitoes, the smooth trickling of stream water.

The grip of their fingers tighten – but it's not Finn, it's her, albeit absentmindedly. Her head lolls against the trunk of the willow they lean on, her black hair catching on shards of bark. She feels his smile on her, a smile he wants to hide but can't, just can't.

"Rachel and I, we came here once," he says. "Actually, it was her who took me, but…it's real pretty, isn't it? Especially with the moon…Rachel wanted candles instead but I like the moon. What about you?" It takes her a second to soak in his words; she's too distracted by the calmness of the environment, the ethereal silver glow on the water to respond right away, but as the words form sentences in her mind, all she can find to say is,

"Whatever."

.

She tells herself not to, that it's stupid, but not even three days later she walks back – tracing her footsteps from memory – to the little creek Finn showed her in her lime green flip-flops and short denim shorts and tank top. The weather is unseasonably hot – strange, for it had stormed less than a week ago; that's Ohio for you – and she's grateful her intuition commanded her to wear this outfit.

As she steps through the trees and brush, she comes to the creek: it hasn't stopped flowing the crystalline blue water, splashing against the rocks in its way and allowing lily pads to float along the surface. She feels as though it would've stopped without them, as though its very existence was based on their presence – but that's a stupid six-year-old thing to believe, like fairies or magic or mermaids. Still, it was almost a special feeling to imagine the creek was animated enough to care.

She tosses her purse on the grass, and sits herself down above the creek. Her feet dangle above, precariously close to getting wet, but they're just short enough they can't touch. Leaning forward, Santana touches one blue-painted toe into the swirling water. It's cool against her skin, and elicits a breath of relief from her mouth, so hot is she from the humidity encasing her. On a whim she plunges her feet all the way into the current; she watches as the water winds through the cracks of her toes, brushing her nails coated with sparkly blue nail polish she can hardly see anymore underwater, and lets the coldness resonate through her body, causing calming vibrations.

Until she hears a twig snap, breaking her water-induced meditation – she whirls around, water spilling upward into the air, her fists clenched, eyes wide. But it's not an attacker who comes through the brush; no, it's just a lanky boy, with black hair standing straight up and his brown eyes dotted with puzzlement.

They do nothing but stare back at the other. Santana wills the blush not to creep onto her cheeks; she hadn't wanted Finn to think she enjoyed the trip enough to want to come back. She couldn't give him the satisfaction, or even the mere knowledge. Of course, wasn't this his place? Wasn't it him who the creek should stop for, the reason she was here cooling herself off in tranquility instead of with Brittany or Puck or someone else fanning themselves and drinking vodka?

(Yes, but she can't admit that.)

Slowly, he comes forward, wobbling with his gangly legs. He's as simply dressed as her; shorts, sandals, white T-shirt. He refuses to look directly at her, instead casually lowering himself beside her, and putting his feet under the creek as well. She looks at him though, as a small smile cricks his right cheek up and he seems to momentarily forget her as the cool, blissful sensation of water runs through his toes too.

She tries to come up with a witty remark to lash at him for so calmly ignoring her, but again it's cut off at the source before she can even taste the words, and she settles back into her old position of uncaring solitude. She closes her eyes, letting the world go on without her to see, to see the creek or the leaves or the animals or Finn. She feels like he's looking at her when she closes her eyes, but whenever she opens them he's not paying her any mind.

When her toes eventually shrivel to prune-like quality, she pulls them out of the creek and stands, shaking the leftover droplets from her ankles. Finn looks up at her then, in his face something like disappointment. He asks her "Where are you going?" and she looks at him with one raised eyebrow.

"Uh, let's see, _home_?" she says sarcastically. "It's bound to be at least five o'clock by now, and my mother expected me home at three." His face stays within that realm of dissatisfaction, but Santana collects her things and prepares to leave without a word. She turns to go but then she hears him quickly standing by the sound of him yanking his shriveled toes out of the water too.

"Wait." he says, reaching for her elbow, but seeing she has stopped, lets his hand fall awkwardly at his side. "Don't go. It's me, isn't it? You wanted to be alone and I came, right? Right?" _Right, Finnocent, your mere presence disgusts me, go drown in that creek why don't you and leave me in peace, it's not as if you're worth the trouble _– she doesn't say any of the insults that course through her brain, pumping wildly with the desire to be spoken. What's wrong with her, she wonders, why she can no longer bring herself to be cruel, vicious, downright coldblooded.

She sighs, angrily, at her pathetic self. "No, no, but it is five o'clock and I'd prefer to live to see tomorrow." Again she goes to leave, keeping her face shielded by her dark curtain of hair so as not to see his face, but he touches her elbow this time, and she's forced to look.

"Wait," he says again, and points to the portion of the sky that's visible through the canopy of trees. "Look." Santana does; the previous pale blue color that had been up there is now being slowly replaced by pink flames of light flooding over, with a pinkish-orange sun nearby, the very tip shielded by so many warm colors. It's like a replay of the day before, when she ignored the environment around her until Finn pointed it out, and the simple beauty was soon enough recognized.

And like before, she doesn't want to admit just how plainly elegant this is so she just says "Yeah, sure, I hate pink," before jerking away from his fingers.

.

She remembers the night in vivid detail: his gentleness and fearfulness, the way he preferred kissing her neck to anything else, and how he so politely took her to the burger place even as she saw in his eyes his displeasure. To her she regarded it as usual, forgetting within minutes everything and awarding her feminine swagger to other boys' fantasies.

But with the recent fascination with the creek and the extraterrestrial pinkness to the sky, everything floods back, no longer a routine haze but something special: he had purred love words in her ears, and not the dirty kind, the sweet kind telling tenderly of her beauty. He hadn't been swift, or crazed, or rough – he was calm, gentle, albeit reluctant, and she cherishes the moment in its entirety too late for it to matters. Now his words sting inside her chest – _"I didn't feel anything…because it didn't mean anything."_ And they were true words; but now, she thinks, they weren't, because when she sees Finn she sees their feet sloshing in the creek, feels his warmth as they gaze at the pink sunset.

She imagines he can feel the chemistry too, can remember the night vividly and cherish too; but he's sitting between Quinn and Rachel on the far side of the choir room, isn't he?

.

When she kisses him it holds none of the softness from that night when he held her and let his butterfly lips land on her cheek. Instead its flavor is passion, hot in her veins but cold in his heart, and she doesn't like it quite as much but it feels like she should.

He has to bend over to get to her lips because of his height, and he wobbles as he kisses her from practically on his knees. They're hidden by the shade of the bleachers, and as she pulls away she sees the black lines of shadow crisscrossing his face, hiding his expression in the darkness.

"Well?" she demands, her hands still firmly positioned on his shoulders in case his response is positive. But he doesn't say anything and she cannot see him. She thinks of how many boys she's dragged under here, whether sober or liquored up, and they were so eager for her they didn't hesitate a bit – they wouldn't _let go_. Finn – he doesn't even try to latch on. He touches her gingerly – too gingerly. Like's she's fire that will burn him. (_Some like it hot, some like it cold – she can go both ways._)

It's obvious he doesn't know how to answer, and because she's afraid to hear it, she kisses him again.

.

She lays her cheek against his arm, the cool fabric of his leathery jacket not quite comforting in the autumn breeze, but it'd be a lot less comforting if she couldn't loop their fingers together and walk with him as her head was against his side.

The once-velvety emerald leaves of the trees snap off their branches and fall, curled and faded yellow, orange, and red, onto the ground. Her bare feet crunch as they step on top of them, and they prick her soles at times so hard she winces, but Finn keeps going forward without any attention being paid to the cracking leaves underfoot.

The creek glows cerulean as they walk alongside it, trickling forevermore left and right; Santana wonders if it ever really stops, or if it just keeps going, connecting with bigger rivers filled with fish, oceans stretching from the beaches of America all the way across the world to Europe. She shakes her head as the thought enters – it's much too big a thought for her to even consider believing in. It's not straightedge enough; and yet, she thinks it'd be nice to have something to believe in, as ridiculous as it could be.

They come upon a huge pond, and she sees the tails of catfish flopping in the water. A stone bridge extends from their side to the other: the other side is not so glamorous, it has the same amount of trees, squirrels, birds, warm-colored leaves. But all she wants to do is get to the other side (_she knows how that chicken must have felt_).

Finn leads her up the bridge; the rubble scratches her toes. They may be bleeding – she doesn't check. She just blocks the pain from her mind as they look out over the pond as it goes back where they came from, getting thinner and smaller as it trails into the distance.

(For some reason, she squeezes his hand tighter.)

"It's even cooler from here, isn't it?" he says, eyes trained on the water, and that goofy-looking half-smile on his face. Santana shrugs – _yes, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen_ – says "Sure."

"I almost want to…I don't know, jump into it, like all of a sudden, just 'cause." She gets the mischievous little-boy vibe again and she feels his desire coursing through her, the desire to go headfirst into that water; but his true age of seventeen is keeping him back, especially in her presence. But the feeling pumping through his veins gets transferred to her, and she feels her own legs shaking with the same craving.

Santana isn't sure if it took seconds, minutes, or an hour – but it wouldn't matter how long it took as she plunges into the pond. The blue swirls around her head, her breath billowing in bubbles, and she lets her body float upward on the surface. The air is freezing as it hits her face, and she can hardly see through her cloudy eyes, but a huge blob on the bridge is moving up, and then a splash envelops her.

Her laughter turns into more bubbles before she swims back to the surface, and Finn is a foot or so away, shivering, his black hair slicked over his forehead. She can practically feel the vibration of his clacking teeth. She swims over to him, and presses her body against his; as cold as both are, the combined heat of their bodies is enough to make them shiver with the warmth.

As luck would have it, Santana feels a drop of rainwater kiss her cheek – another then. Three. Soon – she wonders fleetingly if it's God announcing his approval, or disappointment – a full-on downpour assaults them, coming down upon their heads in huge drops of electrifyingly freezing water. It's not much different a feeling from that other day, except she welcomes the way the rainwater pierces her flesh like droplets of fire – she holds her tongue out to swallow the fiery raindrops, letting them burst on her taste buds, having no flavor, but quite enough heat.

She swims out to where the water can only swallow her knees, and stands to twirl about, splashing the water at her feet up into the air. Finn follows, and the water barely reaches his knees (_god, he's freaky tall_) but he smilingly mirrors her actions, stupidly twirling like he's some sort of ballerina and can dance for more than two seconds without falling.

Santana laughs at his awkward moves, and takes his hands to halt him. He does stop, and looks at her then with such a serious face it frightens her. Her smile wavers for a second at his expression, because she can see inside his eyes not her face, but the memory of somebody else.

He catches a stray drop (_could that be a tear, my dear?_) on her cheek, and he then leans down to softly kiss her. But instead of pink skies and blue waters, she only thinks of sorrow.

.

"Do you ever…wish it was easier?"

He doesn't answer, instead lends his ears to the sound of crickets in the night. His eyes are turned to her window, still open from his late-night entrance inside, but he's not really looking at anything. Santana can sense the blood inside him heating up at her question in the way she clutches his arm underneath the covers.

"Yeah," he whispers, "I do."

She wants to kiss him, because she thinks it might make things better – but she doesn't wear sweaters and plaid skirts, or headbands with little sundresses. She doesn't go to the temple or to church. All she does is sneak out past midnight to the Shell gas station for cigarettes.

All it would do would salt her wounds.

.

By spring so many white daisies have sprung up beside the creek. Santana visits and lays among them, watching the wind rustle their many petals.

Every time, she plucks at least one, and runs her manicured fingernails over the petals, feeling the disturbingly waxy texture on her skin. She carefully yanks each petal off the flower, and in her head she chants, like some silly schoolgirl – _he loves me, he loves me not._

Sometimes the day ends with him loving her, and sometimes it doesn't. He'll still climb in through her bedroom window if the flower announces his non-love, but even when it says he does love her and he shows up for her, she can't help but feel it's all another hopeless game.

The kisses in the rain, the visits by the creek, the shared glimpses in glee – just a prolonged game, a toy that hasn't yet lost its appeal or use. She had those as a child, toys she for some asinine reason didn't throw away the day after receiving. Eventually those too would end up discarded or as a hand-me-down for Goodwill, and with Finn she keeps counting down the days until she can guiltlessly toss him in the Goodwill bin for Man-Hands or Queen Quinn to pick up – but then, she thinks, she's really counting down the days until he'd rather climb through their windows instead.

.

She tells him it's because it got boring. Because he's too nice, too teddy bear-ish, and she needs someone who's in it for the thrills and not the feelings. He stares at her, shocked and hurt, and as he turns to go back to his car in defeat, he looks so pitiful she wants to chase after him, kiss him, hug him, go to the creek and pretend she can be Rachel.

She doesn't. She watches him go, with her fists clenched at her sides and toes digging into the dirt under her (if she doesn't she _will_ run to him), and it makes her feel awful because her reasons are piles of BS.

It's because he's too nice, and she'll never be worth it.


End file.
